Tavarez Looking For a Good Start / Giants win despite bad outing

Henry Schulman, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PST, Wednesday, March 11, 1998

1998-03-11 04:00:00 PDT Phoenix -- The schedule devised by pitching coach Ron Perranoski bears good news for wannabe starting pitcher Julian Tavarez, who had another bad outing in the desert yesterday. On Saturday, Tavarez will actually get to start a game.

In his third outing of the spring, Tavarez allowed three runs in three innings during the Giants' 6-4 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers. The game also featured a terrific four-inning stint by Mark Gardner, a reassuring sight one day after fellow starter Danny Darwin was KO'd by a line drive to the right knee and Orel Hershiser was bombed for nine runs in three innings.

Tavarez has now allowed 10 runs in 7 2/3 innings, and after yesterday's game he expressed frustration about one aspect of the experiment to see if he can be a starting pitcher: The club is not letting him start.

In each of his appearances he's relieved Gardner in the middle innings.

"When you come out from the bullpen you feel like you're going to be a setup man," Tavarez said. "When you come in from the bullpen, to me you're a relief pitcher."

When asked if he was hinting for a start, Tavarez said, "Yeah, why not? It would be fun. I hope they give me one of those and see what happens. But whatever decision they make, I'm not going to complain about anything. If they send me to the bullpen, that's fine with me."

Tavarez talks as if the Giants have already decided to send him back to the pen, which is not true. There is a practical reason Tavarez has pitched the middle innings of his Cactus League games. Early in spring training pitchers work in a four-day rotation, but there are seven starting candidates.

That means three of them have to relieve, and this spring Tavarez, Darwin and Osvaldo Fernandez have been the guys.

But Perranoski will soon put the starters on a five-day rotation. With Darwin on the shelf indefinitely and split-squad games coming up, there will be enough starts for everybody. Tavarez's first one will be Saturday against the Chicago White Sox.

Perranoski said he understands Tavarez's concern that starters and relievers prepare differently, physically and psychologically.

But Tavarez's problems this spring have been more mechanical than mental. He's still having trouble throwing breaking pitches, and yesterday against the Brewers all of his stuff was scattershot. The Brewers were hitting his fastballs, too.

"Today I opened my arm up too much and I was (tipping) hitters to my breaking ball. The pitching coach told me I was too nice," he said.

Manager Dusty Baker said Tavarez has shown little improvement over his three starts, but he said that no decision on the right- hander's future has been made.

Darwin encouraged the team yesterday by walking into the clubhouse without the crutches he needed on Monday, but there's no telling when he'll be ready to pitch, nor whether Fernandez will throw well enough to earn a spot.

The uncertainty about the pitching staff that lurks in Baker's mind had to be eased some by seeing Gardner allow just one run on three hits while striking out five batters -- all looking -- in his four innings.

Gardner consistently nailed the inside and outside corners of the plate with his fastball and mixed in some breaking balls. Gardner often says results in spring training are not important, but he admitted, "There are times you get tired of getting beat up and you get ticked off.

"It was good today," said Gardner, who was hit hard in his last start against the Diamondbacks on Friday. "Today was actually fun."

That went for the team as well. After losing nine straight games in Arizona, the Giants came from behind with a four-run seventh inning to make a winner of Tavarez.

"It seems like we haven't been on the field (shaking hands after a win) for a long time," Baker said. "It seems Little League to do it, but when you don't do it you miss it. Hopefully this will be the start of good things."